An example of a successful viral marketing campaign

Sure we may be a little late to the party… but this successful viral marketing campaign is one that truly stands out.

Chocolate rain. Does this phrase ring a bell for you? Perhaps the video might seem a little familiar. That’s Tay Zonday singing Chocolate Rain and playing the keyboard. This video was originally uploaded on Youtube on April 22, 2007. Since then, the original video has had over 20 million views.

Personally, I think the video is a little funny, a little charming… but after about two minutes in, it’s a bit boring.

What does this video have to do with viral marketing?

Seeing as how this video was gaining some widespread attentionâ€¦ Dr. Pepper (with their new Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper product) professionally recorded a spoof music video of the song along with the original artist (and featuring Mista Johnson) and uploaded that video on Youtube on November 28, 2007. That video (which can be seen here) has had almost five million views with a cumulative rating of four out of five stars. Notice that the product isn’t really featured prominently in this video.

So why am I using this as an example of a successful viral marketing campaign? Well, first & foremost, I’ve been singing “Cherry Chocolate Rain” in the shower the last week or so. But seriously, usually when a video or otherwise is so blatantly sponsored by a company or otherwise, the results are iffy at best. The artist, Tay Zonday, even says that Dr. Pepper hooked him up with the new video.

Normally the Internet, in particular the YouTube community, would be in an uproar about something like this. But I believe that this video is so tongue-in-cheek, and isn’t so overtly product-focused that users didn’t particularly care that a company shelled out some $$$s to Tay to do this. Had it been kind of a lame video… or just not very well done, I’m guessing the video would have received a poor ‘rating.’

Any thoughts about this? Do you like the Dr. Pepper’ed-up version of the song?